Learn how the boats are designed to weather the rough conditions often encountered while deepwater fishing
(Inset) Freeman Boatworks VP of sales Scott Cothran in the company’s Moncks Corner factory where they manufacture a catamaran designed to weather the rough conditions often encountered while sportfishing.
Billy Freeman has always loved offshore fishing, but he never liked getting beaten up on the 70-mile ride from Charleston to the Gulf Stream. The solution for a smoother ride was a catamaran hull, but the options on the market were slow, unattractive, and didn’t handle well. So, Freeman spent a year in his Mount Pleasant garage building a better cat.
Almost 20 years later, Freeman Boatworks produces one of the world’s most sought-after sportfishing boats in its Moncks Corner factory. It’s a classic American dream story, says Scott Cothran, the company’s VP of sales and a right-hand man to the founder. “He said, ‘I think I can do this better,’ so he tried it, and it worked exceptionally well.”
Cothran joined the team after his post-trip reports at CharlestonFishing.com caught the eye of Freeman, who invited him to go wahoo fishing. The comfort of the ride in Freeman’s cat blew away Cothran’s 31-foot monohull. “I said to him, ‘You have something that’s so much better,’” Cothran recalls.
But Freeman was still a local secret, limited by the small start-up’s bandwidth. Within a year of joining part time to build the website and social presence, Cothran left his career as an engineer for Michelin to join full time.
As the company has grown from Freeman’s garage to its first production facility on James Island to a 130,000-square-foot factory (doubling in size next year), it remains committed to making the boats in the US and prioritizing performance over small luxuries, even as its boats command price tags in the millions. “Ride, fuel, and speed are our foundation, to the point that if adding a luxury feature impacts those core values, we don’t do it,” says Cothran. Freeman faced headwinds early on, as many in the fishing community didn’t believe a catamaran could outperform a monohull. Naysayers called out the lack of features and high price point. But Freeman leaped forward in 2015 after clothing company Huk purchased a quad (four-engine) model at the Miami International Boat Show, and the company went from trying to outperform competing catamarans to being the center of the conversation around center consoles.
Production lagged during COVID, but the company didn’t rush the process. Current manufacturing allows for up to 200 boats a year across all models. Streamlined processes in the new factory, which opened in 2021, have helped reduce the timeline for pouring a hull’s mold to delivery down from more than four months to about six weeks, but the wait can range from six months to two years. While waiting for their build to be completed, most customers visit the factory to customize their boat.
Next year, Freeman will make its 1,000th boat. Even with so few out in the world, it might seem like every boat on the water is a Freeman, if you travel to remote areas of the Bahamas or the popular Georgetown Hole offshore fishing spot on a rough day. But that’s just because only Freeman owners can travel there comfortably.
By the Numbers
■ $375,000 to $1.7 million: Price range for Freeman boats
■ 200: Goal number of cats to be built in 2024
■ 10: Boat models with nine more in the works
■ 300: Number of employees
WATCH: Freeman Boatworks founder Billy Freeman explain the inspiration for his company.
